Music

… but will soon be doing it anyway. I mentioned previously that when my PC died my music ground to a halt with it. I kind of need to do music, though. It’s a creative outlet I can’t do without, especially since writing is as much work as it is fun. New PC is now up and running … and that means a new X-Sweet album is coming at some point in the near future. This time, though, I’m taking my time. I have a habit of rushing through this stuff, settling for good enough, and tossing it out the door before it’s ready. Too impatient; lack any drive to be a perfectionist with this stuff. This time I hope to sit on these tunes,…Read more

A while back I posted about an old music collaboration with my buddy Tim. Now here’s more from Tim. And it’s great. Tim is neck deep in a fantastic music project right now, and it’s pretty damn amazing. The best stuff he’s ever done, actually, and he’s done a LOT of music over the years. It’s called Bok, it’s catchy and dynamic and dancy and trippy and more, you can find the website over here, and you really should go download some of those in-progress tunes. Follow Bok on Facebook, too, while you’re at it. It’s good stuff and I’m eager to hear the finished album.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, what with being busy as hell on writing projects and all, but in early January my desktop PC keeled over in a flaming ball of computer death, shards of shrapnel flying around the living room like a Tom Hanks/Stephen Spielberg production. This was unfortunate for many reasons, one of the biggest (for me) being that I was right in the middle of a major music project. My first X-Sweet record in three years, specifically, and hopefully the best I’ve done so far. I’ve been writing a lot of music lately. Not the sprawling guitar soundscapes I love to do, but traditional songs with, like, singing and stuff. And I’d like to keep doing it. But I don’t record…Read more

It’s hard to believe it’s been 15 years since I first did this little tape. It was the summer of 1994. I had just gotten my trust TASCAM Porta 7, a four-track tape recorder that allowed talented people record demos and such, and allowed people like me to ruin the definition of “music.” Which is exactly what I did for the last few months of 1994, the time period from which this “music” springs*. I “sampled” (read: stole) chunks of music from elsewhere, slowed it down or played it backwards, laid other stuff on top of it, and generally just played around with things. Also recorded some noisy nonsense. And so on. Then, I made tapes. Remember cassingles? I grabbed every last one I owned,…Read more

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since I made this first blog post. It’s even harder to believe that it’s been four years since Tim Granda and I spent a few woozy Thursday nights at his apartment in Red Bank, NJ recording the music mentioned in that post. Sadly, while those sessions created some awesome memories and solidified a good friendship, musically all that resulted were a few rough sketch ideas and two semi-finished songs. I hoped to finished at least a third before we were through, “Keep It On,” heard here as two rough idea sketches, as I really liked how that one was coming together, but it was not to be. Tim fell in love and moved away, and that…Read more